


Through the Glass Darkly

by prairiecrow



Series: One Degree of Separation [13]
Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Freedom, Imprinting, Love, M/M, Negotiations, Oaths & Vows, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:03:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the moment of marriage came, Allen Hobby had never imagined that it would be quite like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Glass Darkly

"Allen? Is something the matter?"

The question was gently spoken but pointed nonetheless, and Allen Hobby sighed under his breath, reflecting that he should know better by now than to believe that any of his moods, no matter how fleeting, could escape Joe's powers of observation.

This particular troubled state of mind had been lingering most of the evening, moving in and out of his conscious awareness like cloud-shadow over a field, consistently darkening his subconscious landscape. And now he and Joe were in bed together, sitting up side-by-side with their backs resting on pillows arranged against the headboard, their shoulders just touching while they read their respective books — Hobby a fabric-bound 1947 edition of _Odes to Common Things_ by Pablo Neruda, Joe an electronic version of _The White Goddess_ by Robert Graves. They'd been reading companionably for nearly twenty minutes by the glow of the bedside table lamps, the only light in Hobby's darkened apartment; outside the tall windows, the hot summer night blustered and rumbled with a solstice storm. Air conditioning softly hummed in the background, and Hobby was wearing a set of red-striped flannel pajamas while Joe, as usual, was clad in elegant royal purple silk that enhanced the paleness of his derma and the sleek blackness of his hair and the unblinking cool jade of his eyes.

Now that green gaze was turned thoughtfully in Hobby's direction, and Hobby briefly considered insisting that nothing was wrong… but Joe knew him too well to be deceived. So he closed his book and set it aside to his left, responding the while: "I was just wondering… if you've ever forgiven me. For David 2."

A fractional cock of his head and the tiniest puzzled frown. "What could there possibly be to forgive?

He turned his full attention to his bedmate. "That I created him in the first place. His life was so short, and so full of suffering at the end."

Joe regarded him with a depth of consideration Hobby had never seen in any other mecha. "Have you forgiven _me_ for losing him?"

It was a surprising question, but Joe had a habit of doing unexpected things. "You guided him and protected him," Hobby countered, then sighed more audibly. "What you did, you did out of the sincere desire to help him chase down his dream. I, on the other hand, acted out of a combined motivation of pride, selfishness, and my own inability to let go of the past. And David 2 paid the price for my folly."

"You did what _you_ had to do," Joe responded instantly, setting aside his ReadPad on the mattress to his right without glancing away from Hobby's face, then half-turning to prop himself up on his left elbow against the pillows and to rest his chin elegantly on the curve of his fingers, laying his right hand lightly on Hobby's upper right arm. "And if you hadn't done it, I would have been destroyed at that Flesh Fair in Barn Creek. How could I possibly blame you for setting a chain of events in motion that saved my brain and brought me to your side, in the end?

Hobby couldn't suppress a rueful smile. "Yes, it did bring you to me," he mused, shifting to face Joe in turn. "An utterly unexpected outcome, and in the end the one that mattered the most." His smile warmed to open affection as he covered Joe's hand with his own. "Until I met you, I had no idea what some mecha were capable of — that rare members of your species possessed the capacity for a type of subconsciousness apart from anything we had designed, and even for a dimension that is arguably spiritual." He raised his hand to lay it to Joe's cheek, running the ball of his thumb tenderly over that deliciously full lower lip; Joe's lips parted at the caress, his eyes growing hooded and sultry. "You've taught me so much, and you are unutterably precious to me. I owe you a far greater debt than I could ever repay."

"But you don't owe me —"

Hobby stilled the flow of words with the slightest pressure of his thumb. "Listen carefully, Joe," he admonished — a stylistic conversational flourish, for Joe always paid crystal-clear attention to what was being said. "I've made enquiries, and found a mecha escort service in Canada — in Quebec City, to be precise — which employs privately owned mecha as commission workers. It so happens that I also have a cousin living in that city, and she's willing to take ownership of you and hire you out to that agency on a permanent basis. She'd oversee your treatment and ensure that you were properly —"

Joe's eyes had widened alarmingly, and now his distress burst free: "Are you thinking of sending me away?"

Hobby shook his head emphatically. "No, never — not of my own free will. But I'm not the only person whose opinion matters now." He offered a smile of reassurance through the tension winding tighter in his chest and was relieved to see Joe's body language step down from dismay to wariness. "I just wanted you to know that I'm not your only option for the future. I can't set you free — there's no country in the civilized world where mecha can exist in legitimate autonomy — but I can place you in a situation suitable to your inbuilt purpose and your temperament, and I can ensure that you're well cared for. That's what I'm offering you: a choice."

"A choice that isn't you," Joe murmured, still looking perturbed.

He nodded. "You seem content under my ownership, but —"

"Merely content?" A saucy gleam sparked in Joe's green eyes and he released Hobby's bicep to press his hand to Hobby's chest, over his beating heart. "Oh, Allen — have you forgotten everything we've shared over the past thirty-four months? I can scarcely believe it! Until I met you, 'happiness' was just a word to me, like 'sorrow' or 'regret' — or 'love'."

"You knew what love was," Hobby corrected him, "after a fashion. Your actions concerning David 2 demonstrated as much."

Joe conceded the point with a tiny nod, his gaze never wavering. "He taught me what friendship meant, and his example led me to strike the first blow against the chains that bound me. But it was your tutelage — so masterful, so thorough, and so tender — that truly set me free. You taught me that I could be so much more than merely a function. You saw _me,_ and like Galatea, you brought me to life."

He smiled again, this time with a trace of sorrow. "I recognized your potential and encouraged it to the best of my ability. What you've accomplished, you won for yourself."

"Until Orison," Joe pointed out.

"Which would have failed completely if you hadn't already been so uniquely advanced." He dropped his left hand to Joe's shoulder, implicitly taking a step back. "What I'm saying is that you don't have to take Orison to the final level. If I imprint you, it will be for the rest of my life, terminating only upon my death. And I could only accept that outcome if I knew you'd had the freedom to refuse the procedure."

"And to leave you."

"That's one option, yes. I promise I wouldn't interfere with your new life — only observe from afar."

"But whatever would you do without me?"

"I would love you, and respect your decision. And if you ever had need of my help you would only have to ask."

"But that would only hurt us both." He dropped his gaze to his own hand, pressed to his owner's heart, and his voice fell to a lilt even more musical than was its wont:

" _When I go away from you_  
 _The world beats dead_  
 _Like a slackened drum._  
 _I call out for you against the jutted stars_  
 _And shout into the ridges of the wind._  
 _Streets coming fast,_  
 _One after the other,_  
 _Wedge you away from me,_  
 _And the lamps of the city prick my eyes_  
 _So that I can no longer see your face._  
 _Why should I leave you,_  
 _To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?"_

Hobby blinked away the sting of tears, and when he opened his eyes again he found Joe regarding him solemnly. "Tell me," the mecha said softly, "could you really bear the thought of me, in the arms of another?"

He wanted to say: _I'd do whatever was necessary to guarantee your happiness._ But he couldn't. The words simply wouldn't come, not under the crushing weight of the prospect of lying in this bed alone, night after night, knowing that his lover now belonged to anyone with the money to buy him for an hour — that uniqueness, that incisive mind, that vitally living spirit, reduced to a commodity and consumed by faceless crowds who would never know what treasure they held in their careless hands. He couldn't speak, and after a long moment a warm smile curved Joe's lips and brightened his gaze even more.

"Your eyes," he whispered, raising his right hand to brush feather-light fingertips over the gleam of moisture there, just as he'd done on their very first evening together, "are alight — with love!"

Hobby finally found words, and with them the fundamental truth: "Always. Forever."

"I knew you couldn't get rid of me," Joe continued with manifest satisfaction, curving his hand around the line of Hobby's jaw and caressing the lightly stubbled mortal skin. "You _do_ love me, and you know that even now, without imprinting, I would rather be destroyed than be parted from you. You've given me so much — thought and memory, insight and inspiration, pleasures unimaginable — even my own life, after I'd willingly sacrificed it for your sake. Yet you hesitate to grant me the greatest gift of all, because you love me too deeply to invoke my love in return." His tone turned teasing, his fine eyebrows quirking upward. "William Sydney Porter would be proud of you, I think."

The sly literary reference brought to wry answering quirk to one corner of Hobby's mouth. He raised his left hand again to stroke Joe's helmet of ebony, his fingers lingering over its smooth sheen. "Please, tell me you'll never cut off your hair on my behalf."

"Would that make me so much less lovely?"

He cupped Joe's face in return, studying every contour of his exquisitely crafted mask. "You could be stripped down to your bare endoskeleton, and you would still be beautiful in all the ways that mattered."

After a moment Joe nodded, clearly coming to a decision. "Every day and every night you offer me words of love, just as you promised when you awakened me from the sleep of death — but until now I've never known what they truly meant. I see through the glass darkly, and no matter how closely I gaze into it I will never penetrate its deepest mysteries…" Holding Hobby's gaze, he reached up and took gentle hold of Hobby's hand, and pressed a kiss to its palm before guiding it to the nape of his neck, where his secondary input actuator was located. "… without your help. I want you to take me in hand and teach me, for the rest of our lives. Will you, Allen? Please?"

His heart leaped in his breast, actually skipping a beat when he realized what was being asked of him — and all that was being offered. He hadn't expected it so soon. "The imprinting will be —"

"— indelible," Joe concluded with another nod. "I will be yours for life, beyond all untying." He leaned nearer to offer his silken lips, and Hobby could not help but taste them, irresistibly drawn by their tempting sweetness, and by the their thrilling butterfly caress against his own lips as Joe whispered: "To belong to you and to have you for my own… to fully share your joys and sorrows, and to fulfill all your dreams… my darling, would you really be so cruel as to deny me that happiness?"

This was not how he had pictured this happening. He'd always planned to conduct this stage of Orison in the lab, where he could monitor Joe's processes carefully and… but if the imprinting process failed catastrophically there would be nothing that all the tools of science could do to save Joe's mind. He would be destroyed, and if his existence was to end, why not in his lover's arms rather than on a mecha examination couch? 

And the chances of catastrophic failure were infinitesimal, given the robust stability of Joe's cube functions thus far. Of course Hobby owed it to science to record every detail of the process — but at this moment, slipping his right arm around Joe's waist to draw him even closer and seeing those brilliant eyes fixed so forcefully upon him, drinking him in as Joe's left arm wound around his shoulders, Hobby contented himself with the fact that Joe's cube would archive every detail of the perceptual data flow for later analysis. One did not, after all, conduct a rite of marriage according to the dictates of logic: one abided by the promptings of one's heart and crafted one's vows from poetry, not sterile formula.

So he whispered, "Look into my eyes," and applied just enough pressure to the nape of Joe's neck to trigger the actuator, sensitizing his cube to auditory input. Then he surrendered, losing himself in those shining jade depths as he spoke each carefully chosen word softly, clearly and intently: "Zodiac. Narcissus. Vortex. Aurora. Tyranny. Sapphire. Artisan. Allen… Joe… Allen."

For a second, no response. Joe simply gazed back at him, his lips parting a little as if to speak —

— and then, illumination. It flowed into his eyes and filled them with radiance; it transformed his expression from intellectual curiosity to an awe that was almost religious in its intensity. Hobby felt it pass into his body like a lightning bolt as Joe awakened in his arms and drew a breath that was, for the first time, infused with true inspiration; the mecha's hand tightened convulsively on his, holding him even closer as Joe rode out the first shock of his new awareness.

When Hobby had first activated Orison's sensuality enhancement protocols four months ago Joe's initial response had been one of confusion. That was totally missing in this instance: instead he could see the mecha's mind absorbing the impact of the enhancement, instantly incorporating it, and expanding like a rose of exquisite and incomprehensible complexity, grounded in a solid foundation of all that had previously shaped its development. For a fleeting instant he wished that he had at least hooked Joe up to a portable cube reader, because the cascade of electricity through his brain as it rewired itself would be a thing of beauty as exquisite as the ache of sublime feeling in his voice, innocent and wondering and yearningly declarative: "Allen…"

"Joe," he smiled through his tears of joy, and it was a moment of transcendent acknowledgement: of knowing as known, of seeing face to face. A moment of marriage that no one else need ever understand, because God Himself had witnessed it on this stormy summer night in the warmth of their shared bed — and what did the approval of the wide and ignorant world matter, in light of the highest approbation of all?

Joe's answering smile was so full of delight that Hobby could hardly bear to look upon it. The mecha reached out his free hand to touch his lover — his face, his throat, his chest — with a lingering caress of pure passion, for now that Orison was fully engaged the sensuality enhancement protocols would remain permanently online unless Hobby chose to temporarily deactivate them. Hobby's flesh woke to ardent life beneath that beloved touch, but his heart sang even more fiercely when those perfect lips at last shaped the words he'd waited so long to hear, words as true as steel: "Allen, I _love_ you… oh, how I love you!…"

And Hobby knew then that it was impossible to die of happiness, for surely his heart would have stopped beating otherwise. Instead he was able to return the sweet pressure of Joe's mouth on his and to whisper his own truth, now clearly reflected in the depths of the shining mirror: "And I you, for as long as life lasts — and forever after."

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> 1) "When I go away from you..." from "The Taxi" by Amy Lowell
> 
> 2) William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), author of "The Gift of the Magi". 
> 
> 3) "Through the glass darkly..." a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."


End file.
